Spirecraft Sapper and Shield Pulse?

[Commiesalami]

I was poking through the game sprites and found pictures of the Spirecraft Sapper and of the Spirecraft Shield Pulse.  I'm assuming there is a perfectly good reason for them not being in the game but is it alright to ask what these Spirecraft actually do/did?

[Orelius]

Spy's sappin' mah forcefield!

On a slightly more serious note, yeah, I'm curious about that too.

[soMe_RandoM]

actually i found other hidden ninja, unused sprites. and would like to know why they weren't implemented and also suggest that as unit.
disclaimer, i dont really know names of sprites, but i remember seeing them.
there was zenith wormhole generator kinda obvious what that be used for,
also there was experimental* ninja cloaked leech  star ship *spice things up. it uses very very old leech star ship image but different (longer).
so does any dev care to explain these left out awesome units that could be used as idea in bug tracker?

[x4000]

Yep, there are a number of ships that we did graphics for but for which the ships were cut later on in the process.  Sometimes the art runs ahead of the implementation, sometimes it's the other way around.  Usually those sort of graphics later get reused for something else later down the line, because usually the ship that was cut never sees the light of day in the original form it was thought of (generally they are cut for a good reason).

[Commiesalami]

Yep, there are a number of ships that we did graphics for but for which the ships were cut later on in the process.  Sometimes the art runs ahead of the implementation, sometimes it's the other way around.  Usually those sort of graphics later get reused for something else later down the line, because usually the ship that was cut never sees the light of day in the original form it was thought of (generally they are cut for a good reason).

I'm already assuming those were cut for a good reason and that they will never see the light of day.  But It would be nice to get a hint about what they actually did .  I'm guessing the Shield sapper was extremely good against forcefields.

[x4000]

To be honest, I don't fully remember -- but I think there are records in the forums or in mantis.  The sappers were in general to be something like the dwarven sappers in Warcraft II, IIRC.

[Commiesalami]

I did some poking around the Manits and found the Spirecraft, both recommended by members of the community:

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1067

The Sapper was a ship to help the production of beach heads.  It could build a small cap of unique turrets that didn't need supply along with repair and engineering duties.

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1172

The Shield Pulse was similar to a Hive Golem in how it built up units inside. In this case there was a max of one, this unit was an immobile self - attritioning shield generator.  Letting players keep an extra shield generator or two up their sleeve for those 'stressful' situations


According to the mantis posts, both were cut in the interests of time.

[x4000]

Oh, yeah, forgot about the specifics of those.  Both of those were actually really good ideas and will be making a return someday.  Maybe next expansion.  We did indeed just run out of time with those.  The Zenith Wormhole Generator is gone for good, most likely, though.